http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKV22OkHjoU
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Artist statement
Title: Back to Reality
Inspiration: Based
on personal experience. One of my lecturer asked me why do I look sleepy in
class. When I told the lecturer it was because I am lacking of sleep and only
slept for 1-2 hours every night, the lecturer told me that was impossible.
This video basically explains why I am having lack of sleep.
It is divided into 3 main reasons. Each reason comes with collective data that
I have been collected within the period of one week.
Knocking on my door
Living in my parents’ house means I will be called upon a
lot. Reasons vary from fixing the water pipe, cleaning the fish pond, fixing
the modem/internet connection to buying groceries. Being the elder of the two
that still live in the house, the responsibilities automatically fall on me.
Nature calls
The consequence of drinking too much coffee or water to stay
energized when doing work/assignments means frequent toilet breaks. Peculiar
thing is that it always happened when I’m asleep.
Notification from hell
It is the most annoying thing that can happen while you are
asleep. Being connected to lots of different people means that I am being
forced to sync to lots of sleeping patterns/timing. It seems that there are no
social courtesy on when you can call someone or post article on their Facebook
page or send twitter message or worst, invite someone into a group chat and
spam the chatroom. Things happened randomly and often at inconvenience time.
It’s hard to filter all or switch off or silent the phone altogether because I
might miss on something important.
Facts about SLEEP
11 Facts About Sleep
- Teens need between 8.5 and 9.25 hours of sleep each night.
- Sleep helps you remember important information. During REM sleep (a phase of the cycle characterized by rapid eye movement) your brain determines what’s important to know and stores it for future use. (Key take-away: Get some quality zzz's before your next big test.)
- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that more than 100,000 auto crashes annually are caused by drowsy drivers and add up to more than 1,500 deaths and tens of thousands of injuries.
- Nearly 30 percent of American adults sleep less than 7 hours per night.
- Lack of sleep can result in a number of issues including fatigue, irritability, lack of concentration, and increased stress. In the long run, a reduced amount of sleep can lead to a weakened immune system, depression, and high blood pressure.
- Women who sleep less than 5 hours a night gain a significant amount more weight over time than those who sleep 7 hours or more.
- More than 10 percent of Americans suffer from sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, insomnia, and narcolepsy.
- Some researchers believe dreams are a meaningless byproduct of sleep and consciousness.
- Most people can't stay awake for longer than 48 hours, but the record not sleeping is almost 19 days. As a result, he suffered hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory, and concentration lapses.
- Too much sleep can be too much of a good thing! Nights of elongated slumber can negatively disrupt the body’s ability to use insulin, which increases the risk of diabetes later on in life.
- The average person spends about 649,401 hours sleeping during his or her lifetime.
- source: http://www.dosomething.org
Artist Statement
Title: Prejudice –
Don’t judge a book …
As the saying goes, “Don’t judge
a book by its cover” which carry the meaning of don’t make pre-judgments or
assumptions to someone or something based on their looks. For my artwork, I’m making a book which
covers the issue of sexism and racism: the two biggest issues of prejudice
acts.
For sexism, there’s a silhouette
of a man’s face overlaps a silhouette of a woman’s face. It represents a few things.
Firstly, it shows that even though women have been recognized to be more than
capable of achieving and doing the same tasks as the men but yet still
statistic shows that men still dominates women in term of income and influence.
Secondly, it represents that there’s a woman trapped inside a body of a man.
The public are being more prejudice towards a man expressing his feminine side
than a woman showing off her masculine side. The fact that we take the
silhouette as an image of a man and a woman based only on the outline or the
shadow proved that we all have a preset judgment on how a man and woman should
look like.
For racism, my approach is a
little bit more direct. There’s a silhouette of someone that appears wearing a
scarf or hijab holding a rifle overlaps a silhouette of someone that appears
wearing a suit holding a pistol. “Islamophobia” is a term to explain someone
who is afraid of Muslims or someone whose appearance resembles the typical Arab
looks: brown skin, lots of facial hair, etc. In my book, there’s a quote “This
is terror” when you look at the first image and a quote “This is cool” when you
look at the second image. This is to compare on how the westerners or most
people perceived an Arabic soldier trying to defend his or her homeland as a
terrorist and an agent, trained to assassinate and kill for money and fame as
cool or awesome and sometimes be regards as a role model or an icon.
Silhouette is a good way to
express things without much exposure. We make judgment based on our experience,
surroundings and social conventions. I’m using silhouettes to expose on how
shallow we are and how society shapes our minds into giving assumption and
being prejudice.
Concept Board
The unfinished quote on a book cover shows that even though
we are familiar with the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover” and have an
understanding of its meaning, we still doing it on daily basis. The simpleness
of my concept board is to show that to pass on a great message or to give
impact to society, sometimes the simple method is the best way to make them
realize.
Racism in Malaysia
| "If it's a Malay problem, it's a national problem. If it's a Chinese problem, it's a racial problem. If it's an Indian problem, it's not a problem." — Uncyclopedia [1] |
| "Tall buildings, narrow minds: After 50 years, Malaysia should stop treating a third of its people as not-quite-citizens." — The Economist [2] |
| "The causes and effects of establishing and perpetuating of the "we" and "they" boundaries are manifold. They can partially explain the tight control on the print media by the Malaysian state apparatus whose interest in a divided and fragmented society is obvious." — Frederik Holst and Saskia Schafer [3] |
- Malaysia is a multi–ethnic country, with constitutional Malays making up the majority, comprising close to 52% of the population. About 30% of the population are Malaysian Chineses, while Malaysian Indians comprise about 8% of the population.[6]
- The New Economic Policy (NEP), including affirmative action in public education, designed to favor bumiputeras (constitutional Malays and other indigenous races) were implemented since 1971 when the Alliance Party (now known as the Barisan Nasional) lost its two-thirds majority in parliament in West Malaysia during the 1969 general election, leading to the May 13 Incident. These policies are enshrined inArticle 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia and questioning them is technically illegal.
- The NEP, however, have not been fully effective in eradicating poverty among rural bumiputeras and have further caused a backlash, especially from the Chinese and Indian minorities: [7]
- 90% of Petronas directors are ethnic Malays, with only 3% of Petronas employees comprising Malaysian Chinese;
- only 5% of all new intakes for the army, police force, and nurses are non-Malays;
- just 7% of government servants in the whole government civil service are ethnic Chinese (2004), a drop from 30% in 1960; and
- 95% of all government contracts are given to Malays.
- UMNO, the ruling political party since Malaysia's independence from Britain, also promotesKetuanan Melayu, which is the idea that the Malays should get special privileges in Malaysia in perpetuity. The Malay-controlled government ensures that all bumiputeras are given:
- preferential treatment when it comes to the number of student places in public universities;
- a 7% discounts for purchasing new houses;
- special Malay reserve land in most housing settlements;
- burial plots in most urban areas for the deceased bumiputeras, while the rest have to be cremated at such locations or pay premium prices;
- all key government positions to be held by Malays including most sporting associations;
- a minimum of a 30% bumiputera equity to be held in listed companies;
- full funding for mosques and Islamic places of worship;
- special high earning interest trust funds for bumiputeras; and
- special share allocation for new share applications for bumiputeras.
- Recently, however, the government has decided to made 45% of overseas scholarship open to non-Malays.
- The damage caused by Malaysia's state racism is ever more evident. Malaysia's once sparkling growth rate has slipped.[8] Racial quotas and protectionism are scaring away some foreign investors. While Malaysia celebrates having done rather better than former British colonies in Africa, they must also take notice that South Korea, Taiwan, and their estranged ex-spouse, Singapore, have done much, much better. The economic consequences alone justify ending Malaysia's official racism.
The tentacles of institutionalized racism extend into practically every sphere of life – economic, social, administrative, and even culture and religion.[5]
Racism around the world
Racism, Damn Racism, and Statistics: Using a Truth to Tell a Lie
During the first World War, a prominent British politician campaigned against the issuance of helmets. He cited the statistic that head wounds had increased twelve times over since the government had started issuing steel helmets to all soldiers in 1916.
Can you guess why he was wrong?
(Hint: someone shot in the head without a helmet dies, while someone shot in the head with a helmet …receives a head wound.)
Richard Cohen is now famous for reporting in his Washington Post editorial that, “[i]n New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects – almost all of them young men.” A couple weeks previous, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office released a set of statistics to corroborate his claim that the NYPD should stop-and-frisk fewer white people and more black people. They reported that 90% of those identified as murder suspects were blacks or Latino, and only 7% were white.
In response to the above claims, Ed Brayton of freethoughtblogs.com reported the following:
A study of stops by the New Jersey State Police on the New Jersey Turnpike, for example, found that 15% of the drivers on the turnpike were minorities, but blacks were 42% of those stopped for a traffic violation and 72% of those subsequently arrested — despite the fact that blacks and whites were equally as likely to be violating traffic laws at the time. 77% of all searches were of minorities. A similar study in Maryland found that 17% of drivers on a major highway were black, but 70% of those stopped and searched were black. For minorities on the whole, they constituted 21% of all drivers but 80% of those who were stopped and searched.
But here’s the even more important finding. In both of those studies, whites who were pulled over and searched were actually more likely to have illegal drugs or contraband in their vehicles. In New Jersey, whites were twice as likely to be found with illegal drugs or contraband than blacks and five times more likely than Latinos. The same thing held true in Maryland.
In June of 2012, the New York Times reported that over half of all black people in New York City of working age did not have a job in 2012. The average search time for a black New Yorker was a full year, considerably longer than the average search duration for whites. The number of discouraged black workers was 40,000, compared to 22,000 discouraged white workers. Again, black people make up only about a quarter of the population of New York.
None of these numbers tells the whole story, nor do they paint a complete picture altogether. Be wary of anyone who claims that they do.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
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